Reciprocity
by Checkerboards
Summary: -Sorrow 4- We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them. - Kahlil Gibran
1. The Wooden Horse

Instincts can be a problem. Oh, they were wonderful back in the days of spears and axes made of rock. Instincts were a vital part of survival when your day might include an encounter with a snarling bear or a coiled snake hissing in the bushes. Humanity had generally moved beyond those days, though, and the remnants of those older instincts were more often a problem than a pleasure.

In this particular case, when an orderly in green scrubs had burst unexpectedly into the intake room, Sorrow had automatically screamed defiance and punched him in the face. It hadn't been entirely her fault. After all, Arkham was responsible for "misplacing" her right into Teng's greedy little hands, and she was definitely unwilling to give them the benefit of the doubt that it wouldn't happen again - and the orderly hurrying into the room certainly looked like Teng's old assistant, with his dark hair and burly figure.

For some reason, the man with the newly broken nose hadn't been eager to hear Sorrow's side of the story. Instead, he'd muttered a muffled threat and hit the alarm button on his belt. A small group of orderlies had pelted to his aid, pinning her firmly to the tiles as a doctor jabbed a syringe full of tranquilizers into her backside.

She'd woken up here, in this little white isolation room, with nothing but a mattress on the floor and a stiff nylon smock wrapped around her. They'd slapped her on what seemed like twenty different antipsychotics on the first day alone. The meds had dropped her flat on the ground for a few hours. When she had finally come out of it, she was surprised at how calm she was. The first time she'd been tortured, she'd come out of it terrified...but maybe since she knew Teng was in custody somewhere, and that _she_ was in one of the most heavily-guarded cells in Arkham, maybe she knew she was relatively safe. The nightmares still woke her screaming in the night, but at least she'd managed to hold on to what little sanity she had left. So far, anyway.

She'd been in here for two full days now. In that time, she'd napped, she'd daydreamed, and she'd knocked politely on the door and asked to be let out. Polite requests had turned into demands, and then orders, and when _those_ had been ignored, she'd resigned herself to banging an angry fist on the door. She'd done just about everything she could think of, and she was starting to get bored.

Sorrow looked thoughtfully up at the blank white wall as she absently tugged her bright pink glove off of one hand. The black substance that coated her palms and fingers gleamed dully in the bright fluorescent lights. Then, with a squint of concentration, she touched the wall and smeared a tiny squiggle. The squiggle turned into a lock of hair growing from a fat, fanged monster.

She dragged her fingers gently across the white wall, filling the stark little room with whatever she felt like drawing next. _Stark. Stark raving mad, isn't that what people said?_ She shook her head and brushed another careful smudge of black on the wall.

They were trying new things with her now. Meds, for a start - she'd never had to bother with them before. Now, every day, she had to sit in front of the tiny slot for her food tray and show that she'd swallowed whatever they'd given her. New things were a pain. _Innovations, inventions, invasions...not an invasion, the opposite of invasion...inverse invasion? Damn it._ The isolation ward was totally silent for most of the day. The lack of company had Sorrow playing with words in every thought to keep herself entertained.

Another curving streak appeared on the wall. The thing about the isolation room, the one beautiful thing, was that the walls were nothing but featureless white plaster with little paint-chips missing where ancient padding had recently been removed. And the thing about being alone was that there was no one else around - and that meant no one was there to be hurt by her ungloved hand. Fingerpainting with concentrated sadness on an asylum wall may not have been permanent, and it may not have been a masterpiece, but it was definitely enough to keep her busy between meals.

Sorrow rested her forehead in one of the white spaces on the wall. It was cool on her face, not cold and not hot, lukewarm…_tepid. Tapir. Brazilian tapir, from sunny Rio de Janeiro!_...She added a tiny smudged tapir below the crude sketch of an overbearing bat. Okay, so it didn't look much like a tapir, in fact it looked more like a boar, or maybe even a large dog, but to her it was a tapir. Taper. Wasn't there some kind of candle called a taper? Wouldn't it be fun to be a taper, and just tape things all day? Maybe a tapper.

She slapped both hands up on the wall, leaving two perfect black handprints around the bat. What she wouldn't give to have someone to talk to.

* * *

Arkham Asylum had a research department. Not many institutions had space entirely devoted to keeping a library of sorts of their inmates' activities. Then again, not many institutions housed so many high-profile repeat offenders in towns where the media virtually depended on their activities alone to boost their ratings.

The research department in actuality consisted of a dusty little room in a forgotten attic space once used to store the bedsheets for hydrotherapy. The man in charge was a smart young thing, who had only taken this gig for some money while he looked for something that was more to his tastes. He was a psychiatrist, wasn't he? Surely _something_ would turn up in this city that seemed to spawn lunatics on a regular basis. And when it did turn up, having Arkham on his resumé basically guaranteed him a spot anywhere he wanted.

His feelings about his job, as dismissive as they were, took an abrupt turn downward when he got the call to come and catalog an inmate's destruction of an isolation room. Taking pictures of chewed-up mattresses was not his cup of tea, but he'd do it if he was told to.

"...and be sure to pick up a biohazard suit before you go," the crackly voice on the other end of the line informed him.

"Why?" he asked timidly. "I'm only going to be in there a minute." Maybe the inmate had leaked a fluid or two onto the floor. He hardly felt the need to swathe himself in crinkly yellow plastic for _that_.

A voice in the background snapped orders to the secretary on the phone. "Just go!" _Click_.

He stared at the dead phone in his hands. Well, he'd suit up to make the suits happy. He grabbed the camera and trotted downstairs toward the staff storage room.

When he finally arrived, yellow-suited, a pair of guards were standing in front of a room with the door thrown wide. He flashed his name badge, pinned underneath a clear piece of plastic over his chest, and stepped inside.

The room had been covered from about waist-high down in the most marvelous little pictures. He bent closer to examine them. Little tiny surreal murals were woven together wherever there had been space to draw.

It was wonderful, he thought as he snapped picture after picture of the "destruction". Look at the raw passion in the work! Look at the framing, the angles, the shapes and the…well, not the colors, but if there _were_ colors, imagine them! It was like discovering the cave paintings in France all over again!

He had to meet the artist. Who had drawn such pretty things? He stuck his head out of the door, wincing as the yellow plastic crackled loudly. "Um, excuse me?"

"Yeah?" a guard asked lazily.

"Who was in this cell?"

"Sorrow. She's up on four," the guard volunteered.

Sorrow. What an..._artistic_ name. He ducked back inside and kept photographing the art that covered the walls. Of course she'd have an artistic name - look at what she'd created on a whim! She was obviously a creative soul, misunderstood and locked away for expressing herself. He could picture it so clearly!

He had to meet her and somehow let her know that she'd created the most wonderful melange of sketches that he'd ever seen. There was just something about them...they were funny, and sad, and everything he'd ever experienced was somehow mirrored in a few smudgy lines on the wall. He made a mental note to copy the pictures onto a few CDs to take home as he hurried back upstairs. Maybe he could put aside the filing for just a few minutes and sneak down to the dormitory wings to track her down this afternoon...

* * *

After a long, long week in isolation, Sorrow was finally back in her original cell. On one hand, she basked in the revelry of a real cell…think of it, an actual bed, a window, human contact! On the other hand…come _on_, it was a cell! Even if they served her cheesecake on a tray, it wouldn't make it any better.

Still, being out of isolation was definitely a good thing. She sprawled lazily on her bed, drifting off into lovely daydreams of the various ways to commit Tengicide as she let her eyes wander over Harley and Eddie's poster of Gotham tacked onto her ceiling. Maybe she could turn his own medication against him?...no, that would mean she'd have to have him make more, and that was definitely not in her plans. So what was left...she couldn't just _kill_ him, not without letting him know how very, very angry he'd made her...Maybe-

Her daydreams were rudely interrupted by someone fumbling a key into the lock on her door. She sat up, scooting backward until her shoulderblades were pressed hard against the cold stone of the wall, and stared levelly at the door.

The person outside dropped their keys, picked them up, dropped them again, picked them up again, and jammed a key into the lock with a sigh of resigned frustration at the world working against them. Sorrow felt her shoulders relax. It wasn't Teng, then - he'd probably never dropped anything in his life. _No, of course it's not him, he's locked up somewhere,_ she mentally chided herself. _Like he was the last time?_ an irritating little thought chirped. _Shut up_, she ordered herself, and focused on her visitor.

It was another doctor, holding a clipboard as if it was the only barrier keeping Sorrow from leaping on him and killing him instantly. The vent blew a curl of his sandy-brown hair onto his forehead. He scowled and raked it back with one hand, accidentally dislodging a dust bunny that had somehow landed on his head. "Um, y-you…" He steadied himself. "You're the one that, uh, that drew on the walls down in isolation?"

Sorrow relaxed further. There was no way he was working with Teng. Teng would never hire this noodle of a man. She said nothing and merely nodded.

"I, uh…wanted to say I liked you. Them! Your picture. Drawings," he yelped, eyes widening in total horror at his idiotic tongue. "Um. These," he added, flipping the clipboard around and lifting the top page of medical charts. There was a glossy print there, an 8 by 10 of the tiny drawing she'd done of…she squinted at the blurry picture…oh yes, the sky divers and the onion.

"Thanks," she said, still wary.

"And, uh…" he ran a hand through his hair again. "I'm going to be, um, sitting in. On your session, that is. Tomorrow. If, um, that's…okay…with you?" He smiled nervously at her.

"Sure," she said, raising one eyebrow.

"Okay then, fine, good, I'll just, I'll go then, fine, I'll just…good." The clipboard clattered noisily to the floor. With a bright red blush creeping over his cheeks, he snatched it back into his arms. "See you, um, tomorrow," he blathered, backing out of the door and locking it. It was immediately unlocked and opened long enough for him to poke his head back in and announce "I'm Troy, by the way," before he closed and locked it once again.

Sorrow laid back down on her bed and stared up at the Gotham nightscape. Sitting in on her session? Whatever. At least he was kind of cute.

* * *

Dr. Lily was friendly, talkative, and eager to help Sorrow get on with the business of expressing all those hurtful emotions that she needed to get out of her system so that she could heal and become a healthy person.

But, like most of the rogues, Sorrow wasn't interested in sharing. So Teng had hurt her. It didn't matter. She'd just go kill him, and then the nightmares would stop, and everything would be okay again. Why waste time talking about what had happened when she already had a plan to fix it?

Aside from that, she just couldn't trust Lily anymore. Lily was supposed to be looking out for her - at least, that's what she told her every few minutes while she tried to coax Sorrow into talking. Why, then, had her disappearance gone unnoticed for almost a full week at Arkham? Maybe Lily was working with Teng. Maybe she was just too willing to believe what anyone told her. Or maybe Lily was just a colossal liar, and didn't give a fig for anyone inside the building. Whatever it was, it all boiled down to the same thing: she couldn't be trusted.

So when Dr. Lily asked yet again to please tell her what had happened, with kindness and love covering every word like batter on a corn dog, Sorrow shook her head and mutely stared out of Lily's window at the tiny flowers dancing in the wind.

Troy, seated at the side of the room, had begun the session almost dancing in his seat for the opportunity to hear the artist speak about the experiences that led to the art. It hadn't taken too much effort to get his supervisor to allow him to sit in on these sessions. He'd originally wondered why, since normally most of the rogues would point-blank refuse to cooperate with more than one doctor at once. But as the session dragged on, and Sorrow still refused to speak, he grew more and more disappointed as he realized that they'd only let him come because she wasn't cooperating anyway. Finally, when Dr. Lily led a stone-faced Sorrow out of the room, Troy gave her a sad little wave goodbye.

She didn't even see it.

* * *

The last day of August was unseasonably cold. Tiny drafts, leaking in from countless repairs where inmates had taken a rather direct through-the-wall approach to escaping, nipped at bare ankles and slithered right through the standard-issue laceless shoes on every resident's feet. Grey clouds gathered over Arkham, as if they were observers peering down at a delicate open-heart surgery gone wrong.

Up on the fourth floor, parked in her wheelchair, Sorrow was once again fighting her feet. The numbness would have to wear off sooner or later. In fact, tiny bits of her thighs were coming alive again with twinges of pain reminiscent of that time she'd been clocked with a splintery board by a rebellious henchman. Unfortunately, unlike the henchman, she couldn't just get rid of this problem by dumping it in the river.

She hadn't been allowed back into the rec room since her less-than-triumphant return to Arkham. When the doctors had found out that she'd redecorated, they'd banned her from leaving her cell for everything but therapy for a full month. She was almost tempted to do a little artwork in _this_ cell, too, but the momentary thrill of getting away with it would be quickly stomped over by whatever punishments they dreamed up in the staff room. They might even try locking gloves on her hands again - and that was _definitely_ not something she cared to encourage.

God, she was bored. She squinted across the corridor, past the empty cell in front of her to the cell on its left. In the small sliver of plexiglass visible to her, she could barely make out a green foot sticking out from under the blankets. Ivy was sleeping. No entertainment there, then. Actually, a nap wasn't a bad idea. Her chair squeaked as she wheeled herself back over to her bed and rolled onto the thin little blanket that covered her mattress. "Hmmph." She stuck her nose up at her lifeless feet as her toes twitched feebly.

She closed her eyes and attempted to sleep, but she couldn't make her mind stop racing. It would drift a little toward memories of Teng, and she'd yank it back only to find it sniffing at the heels of memories of needles and straps and she'd slap it away from those and it would run as fast as it could to thoughts about her legs and she'd throw it down and tackle it only to see it squirm out and go running back to Teng. Damn, it was annoying.

The annoyance stopped when her door creaked open. She flicked her eyes open to see Troy standing there, blondish-brown hair forming a perfect curly halo around his head, one eyebrow slightly raised. "I…ah…"

"Never heard of knocking?" Sorrow drawled, as her heartbeat slowed down to something more like a human's instead of a jackhammer _thuddathuddathudda_.

"No. Yes! I, um. Wanted to, ah." He crossed the room and stood in front of her, fidgeting with the clipboard he never seemed to be without. "Look, you're not helping yourself by not telling Lily anything, and, um, you should tell her...things."

Sorrow rolled her eyes. "Listen, Troy, that's your name, right? Troy?"

He gulped and nodded.

"Troy, I'm not telling Lily a damn thing." She smiled and stretched back into her pillow, lacing her hands together behind her head as if she was lounging in a hammock.

"But…why?" he asked, knuckles slowly turning white as he clutched the clipboard tighter and tighter.

She opened one eye and looked him over. "Because Lily's just another jackass doctor, trying to get inside my head so she can put it between the covers of a book. I'm tired of being a lab animal, and I'm tired of being a subject."

"But you're not! I mean, she..." he floundered. "She does want to help you."

"Oh, yeah. She wanted to help me so badly that she let me get kidnapped right out from under her nose. Yeah, I bet she was crying herself to sleep at night when that happened." She rolled her eyes.

"Well, okay, but...what if...I mean...it's just _her_, right? You don't want to talk to _her_?"

"Give the little man a big cigar." She snuggled down into her blankets. When she opened her eyes again, he was standing there with a slightly perplexed look on his face. "That means _yes_," she explained patiently.

He swallowed hard, nodded, and hurried from the room. On his way out, his entire left side connected with the doorframe with a painful-sounding _thud_. He yelped and grabbed his arm, sending the clipboard skidding wildly into the hallway. With a look of hopeless irritation on his face, he slammed the door and pelted after it to the accompaniment of a chorus of catcalls from the ever-watchful inmates.

A piece of paper had fallen to the ground when he'd hit the wall. Sorrow waited until he was gone, then slid herself over and picked up the paper.

In scribbly charcoal, with smudges from charcoaled fingertips surrounding the widely scrawled writing, was the phrase **Gent:Echo irk son:Boring bees hover!**

Sorrow smiled, suddenly realizing what it was: one of Eddie's riddles. That should pass the time nicely. She moved herself back onto the bed. _Quite the anagram, there, Eddie._ Sorrow pondered it, tapping her fingers on the paper.

**Gent** was easy enough, there were only so many combinations of _those_ letters. Teng.

**Echo irk son**…hmm…She thought for a few minutes, wishing that she was allowed to have a pen. **No sick hero**? **Crook, he sin**? She grinned suddenly as it hit her.** Rock in shoe**! So Teng was like a rock in his shoe? _Imagine the boulder he's been to my sneakers, Eddie,_ she thought to herself.

**Boring bees hover**?

Forty minutes later, she was tempted to call it quits. There were just too many letters! She let out a grunt of frustration.

"Having troubles?" came a muffled voice from across the hall. Ivy was awake now, picking at lint on her bedspread to relieve the endless tedium.

"I found a riddle of Eddie's, and I'm trying to solve it," Sorrow answered. "This last bit is really hard!"

"Well, he is known for that," Ivy smirked. "Though he does make them a little easier for the asylum staff…they're no Batman, after all."

She studied the paper again. Teng. Teng was annoying, he was a rock in his shoe...what did Teng do that was annoying?...he talked. He talked a lot. _Verbose_! She picked over the remaining letters and came up with an answer that left a huge grin stretching across her face.

**Gent:Echo irk son:Boring bees hover**! meant** Teng:rock in shoe:verbose neighbor**.

Hot damn.

Teng was in Arkham.

Not only that, but he was Eddie's neighbor, and Teng was evidently keeping up the chatter and annoying Eddie so much that Eddie had to write an anagram about it just to vent his frustration.

_Thanks, Eddie. _

* * *

That afternoon, when Sorrow went to her session, Dr. Lily was conspicuously absent. Instead, Troy was sitting behind the desk, looking nervous and anticipatory and tense all at once.

"What's going on?" she asked as the guard assumed his position right outside the door and shut it tight.

"Well, I…you remember when you said?...well, I asked Dr. Lily about it, and she said that if, that is, if it made you more comfortable, then, um, I could do it…" He trailed off as Sorrow stared at him. "What?" he finally asked.

"What are you trying to say?" she asked bluntly.

He blushed. "I'm...well, Lily...I'm your new therapist," he said in a rush.

"So you actually _can_ say a whole sentence," she mused.

His blush grew brighter. "I...let's, um, get started," he said, pawing pointlessly at the few pages of notes in front of him.

"Sure." Sorrow smiled and leaned back in her chair. He glanced up, eyes bright with hope, and waited for her to speak. Seconds ticked by and turned into minutes. Sorrow was almost able to see his expression slowly morphing from hope to disappointment as every second told him that she wasn't going to speak.

"What are you...thinking about?" he said uneasily.

She shrugged. "Nothing. Doesn't matter."

"It does!" He was leaning over the desk, eager, the very image of a clone of Dr. Lily.

"Why?" she challenged, leaning back at him. "Why does what I think matter so much to you?"

"I..." he sighed. "I just...look, it's important for you to talk to me, for...for both of us, okay?" He leaned back in his chair, raking his hair back with an impatient hand. "Y'know, I...don't do this very often. Normally I'm in the library, cutting newspapers. It's boring, and it's not what I want to do. I want to _help_ people," he said pleadingly. "And they might start letting me help more, if...well, if you let me help you." He smiled tentatively. "It's not like you won't be, um, getting anything out of it. If you start talking, I can, uh..." He waved a hand vaguely in the air. "You can go to the rec room again and, uh, stuff. The lunchroom. Maybe join up with the group that gets to go to the yard?" He sighed. "But if you don't want to talk to me...I don't know. They'll probably put me back in the att-uh, the library, and, um, you might have to go to solitary again or something. They aren't happy when you don't talk."

She examined him once again. His little speech had obviously cost him a lot - sweat was beading his forehead, and the casual hand that he'd waved in the air had been shaking with the effort of talking to another person.

Either he was a fantastic actor, or he was just shy. There could be advantages to having him for a doctor...if he shook like a leaf just from _talking_ to her, she could probably intimidate him into getting her those little privileges even quicker. She could be in the rec room by the end of the week, maybe!

But first, she'd have to play along a bit. She smiled and settled herself more comfortably in the hard little chair. "So what do we talk about?"

He looked suspiciously at her for a moment. When he realized that she was being serious, a hastily-stifled smile twitched the corners of his mouth upward. "Uh, um…" He fumbled through his papers, which were mostly blank. Anything that Teng had found out would have been in his notes, which still were locked away in the evidence rooms in one of Gotham's numerous police departments. On the other hand, anything that Lily had found out was supposed to have been given to him by now - but Lily kept saying that she'd get to it, she'd get to it, with the clear implication that he'd use his time equally as well by asking the walls to Xerox him a copy. "Why don't you tell me about yourself?"

* * *

The sessions continued for a week. Slowly Troy grew more accustomed to playing doctor, and was able to say full sentences to Sorrow without a hint of a stammer or a stutter. She, in turn, occasionally called him by his title - something that made him almost giggly with glee. It never hurt to keep your doctor happy, after all.

They'd discussed her past in bits and pieces. Sorrow, a private person by nature, flatly refused to discuss anything that he really wanted to know about - her parents, her childhood, where she was from...

"So, Sorrow…" he flipped through a few pages of his useless notes. He suddenly had a thought. Surely she couldn't refuse to tell him something harmless like this! "Tell me about your friends."

"Friends?" She mulled the word over as if she'd never heard it before. "I haven't had many, Troy. If you're looking for happy childhood memories, I can't really help you."

"Any friends, Sorrow, past, present…" he trailed off hopefully. Everyone liked talking about their friends! And maybe he could contact one of them and find out some more about her...okay, so it wasn't exactly ethical, but he could couch it in a request for them to come and visit her, maybe? It had to be lonely, up there with all those rogues. How could a normal person survive up there with them? Others had tried. Just look at Warren White - barely a few months up with the rogues and he'd become one of them! He'd hate to see that happen to Sorrow. It was too bad that she had to be up there in the first place - but anyone with powers had to go there, so rogue or not, Sorrow had to stay there.

She smiled at him. "Friends, Dr. Grey? I guess you mean Eddie and Pam and Harley, then."

Beaming at his glacial progress, he started to write the names down. _Eddie, Pam, and Harl_..._Harley_? He glanced up at her. "Harley?" he said lightly, hoping not to hear that it was _that_ Harley.

"Quinn," Sorrow said, sending his hopes crashing down around his ankles. "Y'know, blonde with a Joker fixation?"  
"I know," he said grimly. There was an entire file cabinet devoted to the Joker and his little pumpkin pie. "Pam and Eddie - that's Isley and Nygma, right?"

"Got it in one," she said happily. "They're great. They broke me out of Arkham once."

"Oh," he said. They wouldn't work at all for his plan. "Um…don't you have any normal friends?" he asked, desperate to change the subject.

Her eyes narrowed. "If I had normal friends, do you think I'd be in Arkham?"

She had a point.

"Anyway, why do you care so much? I'm an inmate, they're inmates, we're one and the same, y'know?"

Troy shook his head violently. "You aren't! You're not like them at all!"

"And how do you figure that?" she asked, tilting her head to one side, focusing on him.

"You…they kill people, and they hurt people, and they're seriously disturbed, Sorrow! You know your friend Harley helped the Joker kill fifty people last year?"

"Yeah," Sorrow muttered.

"And you, well…"

"I know. I only killed twelve. Guess I need to work harder next year, huh?" she said with a wink.

He scowled at her. Just because she had to be housed in the high-security wing was no reason for her to pretend to be a rogue! He'd clearly have to work on that with her next time. Joking about things like that wasn't right, not from a nice girl like Sorrow. He resolved to go up and dig through the archives to find out why she'd _really_ been brought here, so that he could confront her with it during their next session.

The door swung open and a guard walked in. "Time to go, Sorrow," he said.

"See ya!" she chirped as the guard pushed her out of the room.

Troy played with one of Dr. Lily's pens as he sat and thought. He didn't have another session with Sorrow until next Monday. Well, maybe he could adapt his plan a bit...

_Sorrow's friends with the Riddler, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn. Harley's in with the Joker, so I'm not going anywhere_ near_ her, and Ivy's got that kissing thing…that leaves…_

* * *

Edward Nygma paced the floor of his cell. Back and forth across the plexiglass wall, up and down the bare wall that separated him from his new neighbor. Back and forth, up and down. The straightjacket was irritating his neck.

"Almost done! We were almost done and the Bat ruined everything!" came a sudden howl from next door. Eddie let out a howl of his own and slammed his head against the wall.

"_**Hut pus**_!" he bellowed. "**Let the push hul**! _**Young mad ten**_!"

"My masterpiece! My life's work! Lost forever!" came the answering scream.

Eddie opened his mouth to scream out another anagrammatical wish for silence when he noticed an observer in a white coat at his window. Instantly he turned and dove toward him, not noticing or caring when his straitjacketed arms connected hard with the plexiglass. "Who are you? I don't care, please, for the love of god, shut him up, I can't take it anymore!"

The man nodded once and walked away quickly. Eddie slumped down onto his bed, waiting for the noise to stop. Disbelievingly, he heard the neighboring door open. "Could you…could you please be quiet?" he could hear the man ask.

"My work, my work, my life's work gone, ruined, lost forever!" came the answering wail.

The door closed again, and Edward saw the man reappear in front of his window.

"Sorry. Can I talk to you?" the man said.

Edward knocked his head once dully against the wall. "I'll talk to you if you get me out of here. Your office, the intake room, anywhere, anywhere away from that **bad star**, that **nail cut**, that…that…" Words failed him.

"Uh…sure." The man, fumbling with his keys, swung the door wide open. Eddie sprang up and ran over to him, beaming.

"Let's go, let's go, anywhere you want to go!" The man gently held the dancing Riddler by one arm and propelled him out the door, leading him toward Teng's old empty office. As they passed Teng's cell, Eddie aimed a kick at his door. The rest of the walk was fairly uneventful, and they arrived in the office in short order. Eddie sat down in the patient's chair with a look of bliss on his face.

"So, Mister, ah, Nygma…"

"Shhh!" Eddie snapped, jerking his head up to glare at the man. "Can't you hear it?"

"Hear what?"

"The _silence_!" Eddie laid his head back on the headrest with a grin of relieved joy.

The man allowed him two full minutes of silence before he cleared his throat and tried again. " My name's Dr. Grey. I, ah, wanted to talk to you, Mr. Nygma, about…Sorrow."

"And if I don't want to talk about her?" Edward challenged lightly.

"Then…then I guess if you're not going to talk, we can take you back to your cell." Grey rose in his chair, preparing to stand up.

Eddie sighed without lifting his head. "What do you want to know, kid?"

"Uh…well, the two of you are, um, friends, right?"

"Indeed." _As friendly as the rogues ever get with one another_. He sighed, thinking of the plans that might have been...but surely they'd both be free again sooner or later.

"She said that you and your other...um...associates...broke her out of her cell," Grey hinted, when Eddie stayed quiet too long.

"Yes." Eddie raised an eyebrow. "And?"

"Why? I mean, it doesn't make sense!"

Eddie shrugged, adjusting his arms so they wrapped around him more comfortably in the jacket, and answered the question with a question. "Why not?" He smirked at the exasperated expression on the boy's face. "Doesn't it make sense to get rid of a threat before it hurts you?"

"Well, yes, but - "

"And doesn't it make sense that he may have turned on one of us next?"

"Sure, but-"

"And isn't it true that the staff was just going to let him do whatever he pleased until someone died?"

"Yes!" Grey snapped. "What I don't understand is why you chose to break a normal inmate out along with a pair of rogues!"

Eddie was caught off-guard, something that happened very rarely indeed. "Let me get this straight," he said slowly. "Sorrow is a normal inmate."

"Yes!"

"Even though she has powers."

"Yes."

"And uses them to rob banks?"

"Yes..."

"And is living in an asylum for the criminally insane?"

"...Yeah..."

"And fights Batman?"

"...Um..."

"And even though her name is _Sorrow_ and not, say, Julie or Maria?"

"...Oh."

Eddie smugly shifted in his chair, his point made. The doctor frowned at his papers, twiddling a pen between his fingers, before shifting a newly interested gaze up to Eddie. "Okay. What else do you know about her?"

"Such as?"

"Anything!" Grey slammed his pen down. "You're both rogues. Fine! She robs banks? Great! Which banks? When? How long ago? Where does she live? Does she have..." he waved a floundering hand, "...helpers?"

Eddie's answer was a simple shrug.

"You've got to know _something_!"

"I know a lot of things," Eddie snapped back, stung. "What I don't know anything about is the personal lives of most of the people in this city! Do you think I have time to sneak around and learn everything about everyone? Do you think I'd even _want_ to do that?" He thumped the chair leg with the back of his heel. "At any rate, I'd never even seen the girl until she was brought to Arkham. She hasn't exactly been active since then," he pointed out.

"So you don't know anything about her," Grey sighed. "Fine. Let's go back to your cell."

"Let's not," Eddie said bitterly.

"All I wanted was to know about her. And, um, you aren't being very helpful. That would mean that we're done." He stepped towards Eddie, ready to lead him back to his cell.

Eddie wrapped his feet around the bolted-down chair legs, holding himself down in the only way he could. "I helped you out, so can you do a favor for me?"

"What?" asked Grey suspiciously.

"Get me a new cell. Get me away from that freak. I can't sleep, I can't _think_…do you know what it's like to have someone like him as a neighbor? He will not _shut up_, he even talks in his sleep! He keeps _screaming_ about Sorrow!" Eddie stared tormentedly at Troy with all the pitiful force of someone that has been denied a good night's sleep for the past fifteen nights.

"I'll see what I can do," Troy promised, then started toward Eddie to pull him out of the chair. "In the meantime…"

"I won't go back," Eddie said, calmly, ankles firmly attached to the chair. "Either you can go get me a new cell right now, or you can get someone in to drug me. At least I'll get some sleep," he added somewhat thoughtfully. He hated drugs, but what choice did he have? He couldn't exactly sneak out, not with this jacket locked around him.

* * *

Why couldn't anything go right? He'd only wanted to help Sorrow, and now he had to explain everything he'd been doing to Lily, who was probably going to report him to Dr. Carlson for breaking some little rule that he hadn't been aware of. He only wanted to _help_, dammit!

Troy left Edward Nygma in the care of an orderly and searched out Dr. Lily. When he put forth Edward's request, Dr. Lily informed him that at the moment, all the cells were taken, and no one was switching cells. Nygma would just have to deal with it.

Troy, ears still ringing from Lily's snide remarks about getting in over his head, strode back to the little office with a pair of orderlies at his back, well-armed with syringes. Wordlessly, he gestured them inside to deal with the recalcitrant Riddler.

Nygma looked up hopefully when he sensed someone behind him, only to lose all trace of hope as he saw the orderlies waiting for him. His face hardened as he decided how to deal with this latest assault on his dignity.

Plan A, staying in the chair, had obviously been abandoned in favor of something a little more active. Edward leaped to his feet, possibly intending to ram past the orderlies, and staggered forward.

Unfortunately for him, his feet had fallen asleep. His limp and lifeless ankles gave out underneath him, spilling him armlessly to the floor as the orderlies chuckled at this bit of unexpected comedy. His head bounced off of the linoleum. Despite what had to be a very painful injury, Edward struggled back to his knees and glared at his audience.

The orderlies leisurely kicked his knees out from under him and injected the drugs into his leg. Nygma, belly-down on the cold floor, sighed dreamily as the drugs swamped his mind. Then, with a small "_Mmm_" of happiness, he passed out cold.

"We'll take him back to his cell," one of the orderlies said, lifting him up and holding him like a baby. "Unless you wanted to come along?"

Troy, about to refuse, nodded assent instead and tailed the three as they strolled down the corridors. After the orderlies deposited the Riddler in his bed, Troy dismissed them and walked next door to stare in at Teng.

The tiny Asian man was making and remaking his bed, all while muttering to himself about his great experiment that had been cruelly interrupted. His laceless shoes squeaked on the tiles as he paced from the foot to the head of the bed, smoothing wrinkles in his blankets.

"Excuse me? May I come in?" Troy asked through the window.

Teng whirled to glare at the young doctor, then smiled. "Of course, of course! Come to learn some things from Dr. Teng, eh, son?" He beamed and gestured grandly to the freshly-made bed, offering it as a seat for Troy.

Troy smiled back nervously as he came in. Ignoring the seat, he stood next to the door and shoved his hands deep into his lab coat pockets.

"How long have you been here at our lovely facility, son? Not long, I expect, since I haven't had the pleasure of meeting you yet!" Teng perched himself gently on the bed and grinned manically.

"Uh…a…few months, I guess. Um, I wanted to ask you, uh, about your, uh…experiment…"

Teng's face twisted with fury. He leaped up from the bed, running over to the wall to pound on the unyielding stone with both fists. "RUINED! Oh, it will be the death of my career, my life's work interrupted…" He whirled around suddenly, noticing Troy slowly backing out of the room. "Ah, no, son, come back, come back, Doctor Teng is sorry…" Teng stepped backward slowly and seated himself among the wrinkled cover on his bed.

Troy edged back in and hovered in the doorway. "Uh…if you don't want to talk about it, I can, um, go…" he hazarded.

"No, no, please, stay and talk to me," Teng insisted. Troy sidled back in and closed the door, remaining within easy grabbing distance of the door handle.

"I used to have a very peculiar patient, Doctor…"

"Grey. Troy Grey," he offered.

"Doctor Grey." Teng smiled. "My patient, it was sad, desperately so, and it had a strange substance on its hands that made others sad, you see? Saddened to suicide, and we couldn't have that, no, no. So I, Dr. Teng, decided that I would do everything in my power to keep this patient from hurting anyone else with its depression." He flicked his hands out in front of him, admired their spotlessness, and continued. "I put it on an experimental drug regimen, perhaps not quite according to asylum rules, but if I cured it, that would not have mattered, eh? And one day…" His face began to twist into rage again, and Troy started making his way to the exit. "One day this patient was taken from my care, removed by other inmates! Intolerable! I demanded its return, and in exchange I was locked away in a prison. But clever Teng escaped, yes, and I got my subject back as well. Not noticed by anyone! Anyone but the Batman." He hissed a grunt of frustrated fury. "The Batman stole it back, and placed me back at Arkham…but inside the cells this time."

"I notice you refer to your patient as an 'it', Dr. Teng," Troy said. "You know she has a name? Do you realize that your subject was a person?"

"My subject was no more human than Poison Ivy or the Joker," snapped Teng. "It's a freak, and my job was to make it safe for us to be around."

"This experimental drug," Troy hesitantly asked, "what was it?"

"Stealing my research, boy?" Teng demanded, clutching the bedcovers tight.

"No, no," Troy defended, "I just-"

"Well, you won't get it! It's mine, my experiment, my masterpiece!"

"Your masterpiece almost killed her!" Troy yelled at him.

Teng stared sullenly down at the floor. Little bits of information clicked together inside his brain like a hammer into gunpowder. He turned a disgusted, knowing look on Troy and launched himself to his feet. "You _like_ it, don't you?" the mad doctor gloated.

"No! I just-"

"You _love_ it," he went on, oblivious to Troy's denials as he stalked closer to him. "That's against everything your profession stands for!"

"No, no I don't, that's ridiculous! I-"

"It must drive you mad," Teng drawled menacingly, "knowing I've had your little precious one at my mercy. How you would have cringed, to see it bound on my table, watching me come closer to inject it with my serum. How you would have cried to see it laugh." He was inches away now. Troy could smell his breath as he talked. "How envious you must be, to know that you'll never know as much about it as poor crazy Teng!"

Troy whirled and ran out of the room, slamming the door hard behind him. He brushed the front of his labcoat down, shot a dirty look into Teng's cell, and strode away. His accusations were totally groundless! How could he think that he liked Sorrow? Well, he _liked_ her, but he didn't...not like _that_...he couldn't! Didn't! Wouldn't! And that was the end of _that_.

"You will bring my subject to me for a little consultation sometime, hmm?" came a mocking voice from behind him.

(_to be continued_)

* * *

_Author's Note: And this, of course, ties up that horrid loose end from _Homesick_. Now you finally know who Eddie's troublesome little neighbor is! (Yes, the two series exist in the same pocket universe. Keeping the timelines straight is a job for Dr. Who sometimes.) _


	2. The Open Gate

A lot of conventional wisdom revolves around the importance of knowing people. Know yourself. Know thy enemy. Knowledge is power.

What conventional wisdom fails to take into account is that no one can _really_ know someone unless they want to be known. The most commonly uttered phrase by neighbors of newly-discovered serial killers is "But he seemed like such a _nice_ boy!" as they watch the parade of corpses being hauled out by grim-faced peace officers. It is all too easy to put on a show and fake your way into being Father of the Year, with no one the wiser about your little habit of mutilating anything with a heartbeat that happens to come into your possession.

First impressions are mostly to blame for this. Once the mental image of someone is formed as a "nice boy", or a "sweet girl", or even "a creepy lunatic", it's excessively hard to pry that image out to replace it with a better one - thus, why character assassination is a favored pastime of politicians.

Troy Grey had developed a somewhat skewed impression of Sorrow, in much the same way that Vincent van Gogh had a skewed impression of proper ear safety. Against all of his training, and against all common sense, he'd looked at her artwork and built up a person that he was very interested in. If he had possessed any kind of first-hand information about her to dig through, perhaps it might have knocked that first impression aside. But since there were no easy answers, and since Sorrow herself was more inclined to discuss virtually anything rather than herself, he was left with nothing but newspaper articles to examine.

The newspapers of Gotham, much like newspapers everywhere, were staffed with people too busy or lazy to check their facts and too eager to get the scoop to find out if the big story was actually the truth. 'Unbiased journalism' was a phrase that was equally meaningful as 'honest politicians' - a good idea in theory, but when was the last time you ever saw them in real life?

Troy knew this, and he reasoned that that was the only explanation for some of the outlandish stories about Sorrow buried in the archives. He simply couldn't fathom that his one and only patient was someone who had personally been responsible for the deaths of at least twenty of Gotham's ne'er-do-wells. _But then again_, he thought, _they never said she killed anyone that wasn't already a criminal. So that's something, right?_ He smiled and skimmed another article. This one featured her infamous escape from an undisclosed police-run 'hideout', detailing her wild tumble from a window into a dumpster. _What bravery!_ The next one was about her near-suicide, stopped just in time by the Batman. He frowned at the picture, featuring Sorrow in a spasm of horror as they loaded her into a van. Tears were streaming down her face, smudging her grey makeup. To Troy, it was obvious that she'd tried to kill herself to make some kind of reparations for whatever she'd done in the past.

Which only goes to show, of course, that those pesky first impressions can do a lot more damage than you'd ever guess. All the evidence pointed to Sorrow being, well, a _rogue_ - but that wasn't the girl he thought he knew, so all the evidence was obviously wrong.

The Sorrow he saw in his sessions only reinforced his beliefs. She didn't threaten him, or revel in the suffering of others. (She wasn't particularly sympathetic to most people, either, but she'd probably lived a very hard life.) Besides, she was so inventive, and she had the kind of sharp-witted confidence that he'd gladly give his left leg for.

His sessions with Sorrow were quickly becoming the bright spots in his dusty, lonely days. For fifty short minutes a day, he was able to do what he'd always wanted to do - to help people - and it was merely a very fortunate coincidence that he happened to be helping such a lovely girl.

It was just a pity that no one else seemed to see her the way _he_ did.

* * *

They say that therapy only works if you want it to. In Sorrow's case, this was only partially true.

The main focus of her therapy - coaxing her back into the thought patterns of the populace at large - was somewhat derailed by the fact that her therapist didn't seem to see any problems with her at all. He dismissed her crimes and generally acted as if the whole thing had been a huge mistake on someone else's part.

Sorrow didn't quite know how to feel about it. She'd never been one to take pleasure in hurting people - well, people that didn't _deserve_ it, anyway - and having someone blatantly dismiss the possibility that she might kill them was something that hadn't happened in a long, long time.

Occasionally, she felt like openly admitting everything she'd ever done, just to see how he'd react. Certainly he couldn't ignore the thefts, the murders, and all the other little trivia that cluttered up her rap sheet if she told him about them in every graphic detail. On the other hand, though, she didn't want to break that little bubble of naive innocence around him. Some little part of her almost wanted to give up the whole crime thing, just to let him live with his head in the clouds a little longer.

In three weeks of therapy, they'd basically established a lopsided friendship, but nothing else. They'd discuss current events, asylum gossip (the Riddler's most recent escape being item one on the list, since he'd done it the hard way by throwing himself out of his therapist's window onto a handy tree), and anything but the things they were supposed to be talking about.

Currently, Troy was telling her stories from his family. She was pretty sure that was against some rule or another, but she wasn't about to start complaining. After all, the more he talked about himself, the less she had to worry about lying to him. Besides, his stories were great!

Troy leaned back in Lily's chair, reminiscing. "...so Mom wanted to save this poor little kitten. It was already dead, but she thought she could help it because hey - what six-year-old knows about that kind of stuff? So she thinks, the first thing we've got to do is to find something to wrap him in, to keep him warm. Bingo! She spots her target under the bush."

"A plastic bag?" Sorrow asked, a little smile on her face.

"Nope!" He grinned at her. "Abandoned men's underwear."

"No!" Sorrow giggled. "Whose were they?"

"She didn't know. So she wrapped the kitten up and thought great, now I can take him home with me! I'll just put him in the car under the seat so he'll be safe! But somehow, she, um, forgot to take it back into the house with her..." He chuckled. "Grandma said she was so confused to go into that awful-smelling car and find a dead cat in underwear under her front seat!"

"Your mom didn't actually do that," she accused, laughing. "No one would do that!"

"True story," he said. "What, didn't your mom like animals?"

"She did," Sorrow said, caught off-guard. "She...So what about your sister?" she said, abruptly derailing her train of thought.

Troy shrugged, accepting Sorrow's deflection as he'd accepted all the others. "She didn't get up to much as a kid. At her wedding, though...wow." He flipped a pen absentmindedly through his fingers. "One of the groomsmen was a real jerk to her, so when she picked up his tux, she put itching powder down the neck of his jacket! He almost wriggled out of his skin during the service. I just about laughed myself sick."

"Any other wedding bells in your life?"

The pen clattered to the desktop. "No, I've never - I mean, I don't have a...um...I don't have _time_ for...uh...girls," he muttered softly.

"I meant your brother," Sorrow pointed out patiently.

"Oh. _Oh_!" He blushed a bit. "Well, Mark's been married for, geez, years now. He's got kids, and -" There was a distinctive squeaky rattling sound outside, as if someone had let loose a mouse with a tin can tied to its tail. " - and you've made good progress this week," he added hurriedly as the door opened. "Horace! Right on time, um, as always."

"Yeah, doc," Horace the orderly mumbled as he eased the excessively noisy wheelchair over the threshold to the office. "C'mon, in the chair."

Sorrow winked at Troy. "I don't think so," she said calmly.

"You've gotta go back now. Right, doc?"

Troy immediately covered up his expression of slightly panicked insistence with that of a doctor's ultimate authority. Since Troy and ultimate authority didn't go well together, he ended up looking more like a man who had just sat on an ice cream sandwich. "Right," he said as firmly as possible.

"Well, if you insist," Sorrow said. With a mighty burst of effort, she shoved herself upright and balanced on her own two feet. "But it's such a nice day - I think I'll walk."

"You can - that's _fantastic_!" Troy beamed, leaping to his own feet. "That's just wonderful! That's - I mean, good, good," he said, hastily reining in his fervor. "Uh, yes. Excellent. We'll discuss this more tomorrow," he added. "I'll take the chair back for you, Horace."

* * *

There were no clocks in Arkham's dormitories. They were an unnecessary and dangerous expense, with all their little mechanical bits and bobs ready to be reassembled into any weirdness the rogues might dream up. So, instead of watching the clock count down the time until her next session, Sorrow was lazily pacing her cell.

Some people might have complained about the ill-fitting laceless shoes, the total lack of socks, or the icy, rock-hard linoleum if they'd chosen to walk barefoot. Sorrow, who had been numb-legged for most of the last five months, could have cared less about the minutiae. She was walking again - and that was blissful enough to cancel out the rest of it, even if she wasn't a hundred percent back to normal. The painful pins-and-needles prickling on the soles of her feet was all that was left of Teng's nasty little medicines.

Six steps, turn. Four steps, turn. Three steps, sidestep the bed, three steps, turn. Four steps, turn. When that got boring, she turned around and shuffled the other way, wobbling slightly as her newly retrained muscles remembered how to take corners and how to avoid faceplanting on the floor when she lost her balance.

Six steps, turn. Four steps, turn. Three steps - _SKREESKREESKREESKREESKREE_! In a moment of lost concentration, her feet twined around one another and she bellyflopped onto the bed. _SKREESKREESKREESKREE_!

"What the hell's going on?" she bellowed, hands clasped tightly over her ears as she stumbled toward the window.

Ivy, in her cell down the hall, shrugged her ignorance as she glared up at the nearest speaker broadcasting that ratchety wail. "Someone hit the alarm."

"No, really?" Sorrow snapped. "I'm _stunned_."

_SKREESKREESKREESKR- _The alarm cut off abruptly as orderlies raced by, dragging protesting inmates by the arm away from the rec room or their therapy sessions. "_I wonder what they WILL do next!_" the Mad Hatter said conversationally to his orderly as he was shoved at high velocity past Sorrow's cell."_If they had any sense, they'd take the roof off_."

"For the last time, Jervis, that isn't what lizards sound like!" the orderly growled. "We are not under invasion by giant little girls, and that's _final_!"

"Clear the hall!" someone bellowed. The orderly pushed Jervis into his cell and hustled as quickly as possible away from whatever was happening at the other end. Sorrow, with her face pressed to the glass, was barely able to make out a large group of orderlies trudging toward her. She squinted through the mass of bodies as they plodded along and caught a glimpse of the Joker sandwiched tightly in the middle, bleeding, grinning, and stuffed into a straitjacket. The mob passed by, trailing a few nurses.

"What happened?" Sorrow asked one of them, patting the glass to get her attention.

The nurse glanced numbly at Sorrow before returning her gaze to the end of the hallway. "The...the Joker got into our cleaning supplies," she babbled, twisting the hem of her sweater. "He bombed the staff room...all the doctors are going to the hospital, there was a meeting about staff safety going on and he bombed it!"

"Was Troy there?" Sorrow noticed Ivy's look of disgust and tried to hide some of her concern. "Dr. Grey? Was he there?"

"Who?" the nurse asked distractedly. A sudden burst of hysterical laughter echoed down the barren hallway. The nurse, with a look of resigned terror on her face, raced toward it.

"Hoping for a little time off from therapy, Sorrow?" Ivy asked, one thin red eyebrow raised.

"No, I just...he's...I..."

"You _like_ him, don't you," Ivy asked, disgusted by the thought.

"No! I mean, he's...I just don't want him dead, okay?" Sorrow stammered. "He's nice. I mean, for a shrink, he's...well, I mean-"

"Spare me the details," Ivy drawled, turning back to her plants.

* * *

Sorrow wasn't nervous about Troy being hurt. That was a stupid, stupid thing to assume. Just because she'd been sitting by her window watching everyone go by didn't mean that she was waiting for word on his survival. Okay, so she'd managed to wear a hole in the sleeve of her jumpsuit from fidgeting with it - but maybe that bit hadn't been made well enough. She definitely wasn't waiting like a puppy in front of the door, and she _certainly_ didn't care one way or another if he had...died.

What was _wrong_ with her? He was one of _them_. Why on earth should she care about him, even a little? Okay, so his stories were fun, and he was nice, but..._Aaaaargh_! she thought, punching her thin little pillow.

The Mad Hatter's reedy little voice broke through her thoughts. "_Aren't you sometimes frightened at being planted out here, with nobody to take care of you_?"

"Jervis," Sorrow snapped, whirling around to face his cell, "what are you talking...about..." The explanation was suddenly unnecessary, as she saw Troy weaving his way dully through the flood of busy orderlies. "Troy!" she called happily. "You're okay!"

Well, he was _physically_ okay. His expression was reminiscent of someone who had just been informed that the garage had collapsed on his vintage car and killed his cat. "Yeah, I'm...fine," he said, taking a shaky-handed sip of his huge mug of coffee. "I wasn't even there. Wasn't invited. It's good to be useless sometimes, I guess." He took another belt of coffee and shuddered. "He killed Dr. Jackson. Everyone else is in the hospital."

Sorrow made halfhearted concerned noises. Who cared about _them_? "Listen, Troy, I-"

"I'm going home now," he interrupted, staring into his coffee as if it might tell him that everything was going to be okay. "Um...I'll see you later." He wandered off down the hallway, bumping off of the occasional guard and slurping his coffee.

Sorrow gently sat back down on her bed. That wasn't the Troy she thought she knew. Okay, so he might have been a little upset that the Joker had blown up his boss and most of his coworkers - but what did he expect, working at Arkham? Did he think that no one ever died here? No one could be _that_ naive.

Maybe he wasn't naive anyway. Maybe...maybe it had all just been an act to win her trust. Maybe he'd been...oh, God, maybe he'd been in league with Teng all along and she'd been too stupid to realize it!

Well, that was going to end _right now_. She'd play along at the sessions to make him think that she didn't suspect a thing...yeah, that would work for a little while. And then...she looked down at her bright pink gloves. Then she'd just have to put her plans into action.

* * *

Change can be good. When everyday life has fallen into a pattern, when every meal is served at the same time, in the same place, with the same companions, sometimes it's nice to abandon the kitchen and strike out for exotic new locations like Burger King. (Obviously, it's not good to change too much too quickly.)

And while anyone on the street would agree that change is good for the average person in a rut, psychiatrists would vehemently uphold their belief that change is a horrible thing for their patients. How could anyone possibly hammer warped minds back into place if they were allowed to do whatever they pleased, whenever they pleased? It would be like sculpting a statue by using a hammer one day and a fish the next.

So, even though the lion's share of the staff in the rogues' wing was in the hospital or in the graveyard, it was determined that therapy sessions would continue. From his bed in Gotham General, Dr. Carlson assigned the staff he knew he could trust around the rogues (as well as one or two others that he was goading toward an early retirement) and hoped for the best.

When Troy showed up for work the next day, he was flabbergasted to find a stack of case files a foot high on his desk and an orderly bringing in more by the armload. "What's going on?"

"You're takin' on more patients. Temp'ry," the man added, dropping his newest bundle of work on the desk. "You got Ivy an' Quinn. Lots a luck."

"But what are all the files for?"

The orderly sighed. "Search me. Carlson said, bring you the files. Here they are. Isley's normally due to start in a coupla hours." He glanced around the room, taking in the scissors, the glue, and the exacto knives that lined Troy's desk. "You want me to set up somethin' for ya downstairs? We got a few empty offices now."

"Yeah. Please," he added, gingerly peeking into the top of Ivy's file.

Two hours later, he was seated comfortably behind Dr. Jackson's old desk trying to jam a pair of anti-pheromone filters into his nose. A sharp plastic edge dug into the inside of his nose. He winced and tried to adjust it so that it wasn't in danger of spearing his brain. When he had them settled somewhat comfortably, he sat back in the creaky old chair and looked around. He'd never been in one of these offices before. The therapy offices, purposefully barren, lacked any kind of personal touch, so it was almost as if Dr. Jackson had never existed. But he had, he'd been at this desk yesterday...

The door creaked open. "You're not Tanaka," the green woman in handcuffs accused him.

Troy gulped. She was probably the most beautiful creature he'd ever seen. "I-I-I...no. She's in the, um, hospital. Have a seat?" he suggested, voice cracking audibly on the last word.

Ivy smiled a lazy, lionlike smile and eased into her seat in a manner that would have made Brigitte Bardot pack up her swimsuit and go back to France.

_Must not ogle supervillains. Must not ogle supervillains_. "Um, so, you...like plants?" he said desperately, trying to keep his eyes locked onto hers.

"Yes," she purred, arching backward to stretch her back. "My goodness, it's hot in here."

Yes, it was. It was very hot. That would explain the sweat that was starting to roll down his chest. Hot. Yes. "Yeah," he agreed.

"Could you be a dear and open the window?" Ivy asked, rolling one shoulder slowly up and back as she tilted her head and batted her lovely green eyes at him. "The fresh air would feel wonderful."

He was halfway to the window before he remembered. "I can't," he said regretfully. "I don't have the, um, keys."

Her eyes flashed with irritation. "Are you sure? They might be in the desk drawer," she suggested.

"No, I can't," he said, shaking his head. "Um, the Riddler got out like that last week...we're not supposed to open any windows."

"Little bastard stole my idea," she grumbled, dropping the sexy pose in favor of one that resembled a teenager denied use of their iPod. She examined him, as if now she was seeing him as a person rather than just one more obstacle to jump over on her way out of the building.

"Well, since we're, uh, here...anything you want to, um, talk about?" he suggested hopefully.

A wicked look crept into her eyes. "Yes, in fact," she said quietly. "How do you feel about doctors consorting with patients?" She leaned forward, expectantly awaiting his answer.

_Why did the jumpsuits have to unbutton down the front_? Troy thought desperately, leaning back. _And why didn't the orderly make her fasten hers up? God, it's hot in here._ "Um..." he said. "I, ah..."

"Should they or should they not?"

"I, uh, of course...not. No. They shouldn't. Um," he stammered.

Ivy leaned back in her chair, delicately crossing her legs. Troy gulped. "You should remember that," she advised him coldly. "I saw the way you were looking at her."

"Her?" he said. "Her who?"

Those luminous green eyes in that gorgeous face rolled into an expression that said he couldn't be dumber if he tried. "Sorrow," she drawled.

"I...don't know what you mean. She's my patient, um, not my...uh..."

"You certainly looked like you wanted her to be your _uh_," she mocked. "You're seeing Harley this afternoon?"

"How did you know that?" he gasped.

She gestured with a thin green hand toward the file on the back table clearly marked HARLEEN QUINZEL. "You should discuss it with her."

"No, I mean, um, it's okay, I just won't - "

"I _said_," Ivy interrupted, placing her hands on the desk and leaning forward until their faces almost touched, "you should discuss this with her. Don't make me ask again. I might not feel like asking nicely next time." With that, she took herself off of his desk and sauntered into the little room outside the office.

Troy let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding and sank down into his chair. As the orderly outside, bemused, took Ivy back to her cell, Troy examined the blank sheet labeled "Ivy" on the top of his notepad. With quick movements, he tore it off, crumpled it, and tossed it in the nearest trash can. Well, at least he had a while before -

Another orderly was knocking on his door. "Brought her a little early," he volunteered, shooing Harley Quinn into the room.

"Hiya, Troy-boy!" Harley chirped, bouncing happily into the chair that Ivy had just vacated.

It was going to be a very, very long day.

* * *

Harley Quinn beamed at the young doctor as he fumbled with his notepad. It was nice to see a cute boy in the profession she'd vacated.

"So, um, you're, ah, H-H-Harley Quinn, then?"

She nodded and flashed a perky smile. "Sure am, T. G.!"

"And, um…do you want to…talk about anything?" he managed.

She tilted her head and grinned mischievously at him. "Red said you wanted to talk to me, actually."

The man fumbled with his pen, almost dropping it in his haste to hold on to it and remain nonchalant. She hadn't seen panic like that since the last time she and her Puddin' dropped by a bank during business hours. "Um, sure," he said. "Uh, she said that...to tell you...we were talking about...uh...doctors and patients. Um. Relationships."

Harley's happy smile disappeared like a popped soap bubble. "I'm not givin' up Mistah J!" she snapped, folding her arms. "If that's what Red wants, you can tell her to forget it!"

"No, actually, that wasn't...I..." He stared quizzically at her. "What does that have to do with anything?"

Slightly comforted that she wasn't going to have to defend her One True Love again, she drew her legs up comfortably into a tailor's seat and smiled. "I used to be his doctor. Kinda." The confusion in his eyes didn't fade as she'd expected. "Didn't give ya time to read the file, huh?"

"No," he muttered. "So he used you for, what? Late-night emergencies? He obviously couldn't trust hospitals...for wounds," he explained.

"Oh. Oh!" she giggled. "No, I was his shrink! Like you," she smiled. "Gave it all up when I fell for him, though." She hugged herself tight with the joy of the memories. "Nothin's betta than a night with Mistah J. Nothin'."

Troy was staring at her openmouthed. "But...but he kills people! He killed Dr. Jackson yesterday! And all the other doctors are in the hospital! Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

She shrugged. "It's just a joke."

"Some joke," he muttered, scribbling a doodle on his notepad.

Harley studied him for a second. He hadn't meant to talk about her, for sure, because he was trying to hide what he was thinking so she wouldn't see how relieved he was. She tapped her fingers on his desk and he jerked his head upright.

"So what were you _really_ s'posed to talk to me about?" she asked. "Docs and patients…_you_?"

He froze. Oh, yes, that was the right track, sure enough. "You and…you and someone. Who's the girl, Troy?"

He was still frozen, with nothing but his head quivering in a gentle back-and-forth negation of her words.

"Okay…who's the boy?"

He shook his head violently. "She's…" He slapped a hand over his mouth.

"She! So it _is_…and Red wouldn't care unless it was her, me or…_Sorrow!_"

He flinched backward, obviously expecting some kind of emotional tirade. Harley inwardly made a note to make Red stop being so hard on people in love. Love was a _good_ thing!

* * *

Troy stared in horrified shock at Harley Quinn as she launched herself out of her chair. This was it, she was going to snap his neck, he was going to die...he kicked feebly at her as her hands wrapped around his throat. No, her arms...and not his throat, either, but his shoulders...His thoughts ground to a halt as he realized that she wasn't hurting him, but hugging him.

"Way to go, Troy-boy! Now yer one of us!" Harley squeaked into his chest.

He wasn't in love with Sorrow, he was _determined_ that he wasn't in love with Sorrow...but now didn't seem like the best time to bring it up. And...one of _us_? He didn't like that implication one bit.

"An' S'll be so happy, too, 'cuz she's been actin' awful funny recently," Harley went on to the unhearing doctor.

Troy was feeling the urge to start acting funny himself. How was he going to convince the entire rogues' gallery that he wasn't in love with Sorrow? How could he hide it, so that his boss didn't find out about this totally unprofessional breach of ethics?

But first of all, how was he going to pry Harley Quinn off of him before she crushed his ribcage?

(_to be continued_)

* * *

_Author's Note: The kitten-in-underwear story is courtesy of my own mom, who was quite the animal lover as a small girl. _


	3. Nighttime Maneuvers

The idea of karma has been a vital part of human reasoning since we first developed the ability to think about the world. In fact, nearly every major world event can be traced back to this desire for cosmic justice. Wars large and small have been fought over the principle that evil people need to have evil things done to them. Criminals are sent to prison, partly out of a desire to keep them away from law-abiding citizens, but mostly to give the nebulous forces of universal justice a hand in making them pay for their crimes.

Universal justice often requires help, mostly because it doesn't exist. Searching for justice in the universe is similar to searching for a unicorn in the woods: both are a beautiful thought, idealized by dreamers and, regrettably, wholly imaginary. In the end, it's easier to slap together some sort of makeshift facsimile and deem it good enough for now. A mere trip to prison can never be a full balancing of the scales, just as a white horse with a traffic cone strapped to its head will never be a full unicorn, but it's a good start.

In the days following the explosion at Arkham, Sorrow had done virtually nothing but sit in her cell and think. Skipping therapy was easy enough - all it took was a boneless, limp posture on the bed as well as a total lack of response to prodding and the overworked orderlies assumed that she'd been drugged.

So instead of wasting time listening to stories told by a liar, Sorrow had been planning her exit from Arkham. Her chosen day - Friday - had finally come, a day when orderlies and guards alike were more likely to be thinking of the fun they should be having rather than the unlucky shift they'd pulled.

Sorrow waited in the middle of the room, standing perfectly still and letting the routine of the asylum happen around her. From down the hall, she could hear the faint _clink, clink_ of some enterprising soul trying to burrow through plexiglass with his teeth. In the dimmed lights, she could see quite clearly that her neighbors on the opposite side of the hallway were asleep. She waited, tension straining her shoulders, for her cue.

A soft, rythmically clicking set of footsteps approached her cell. _Now_. She slammed her foot into the bed. Ancient bedsprings rattled as the bedframe shrieked against the wall. "Ouch!" she shouted, flopping to the floor and cradling her left leg.

An orderly filled her window. "Lights-out means quiet time," he reminded her.

She turned a tear-streaked face up to his. "I fell," she whimpered. "My leg hurts."

The orderly sighed. "Well, you can go see a doctor in the morning." He began to turn away.

"It _hurts_!" she wailed. "I think it's broken!"

The orderly sighed the put-upon sigh of those who are only there to collect a paycheck, not to deal with fussy inmates. "Fine. I'll be right back." He disappeared.

Sorrow, pretending to hug her totally uninjured leg, slipped her fingers up her sleeve. So far, so good. She rocked gently in place, letting out little fake sobs, until she heard the insistent _squeak-squeak-squeak_ of her old wheelchair. Ooo, better and better!

The orderly unlocked her door and sauntered in, leaving the chair in the hallway. "Okay. Let's go see the nice doctor," he drawled, preparing to scoop Sorrow up.

In one fluid motion, Sorrow peeled the glove from her hand and slapped him across the face. "Hey!" he protested, dropping her back onto the linoleum. A smudged black handprint stood out on his unshaven cheek. "Whadja do that...for...oh,_ God_..." He swayed uncertainly for a moment and knelt heavily on the floor. "I didn't mean to...Charlie, _no don't_ -"

"Shhh," Sorrow ordered, wrestling her glove back on. The man choked out a sob and fell silent. "Good boy," she muttered. "Now..." She unbuckled the waist pack from around his bulbous gut and peeked inside. Car keys, wallet, a ring of institutional-looking keys, and...oooo...a syringe full of something that was probably naptime in liquid form. She zipped it back up and attached it around her own waist.

Her original plan had been to switch uniforms with the man, too, but that wouldn't work with Captain Tubby here. She'd look like she was wearing a tent. She had also planned to drag him into bed, but she couldn't shift the guy by herself. So, instead, she draped her blanket over him and knelt by his head.

His eyes were wide open, unseeing, as he relived whatever tragedies he'd had in his past. With her gloved fingertips, Sorrow scraped some of the tears off of her face and rubbed them into his forehead. It would probably take about five or six hours for them to kick in, and then he'd be back to normal again.

"Later," she chirped happily, skipping to her feet and scooting out of the cell. After she'd eased the door shut, she turned her attentions to the wheelchair. It let out a protesting squeal as she shoved it closed. With the chair under one arm, Sorrow trotted through the hallways, looking for her target.

This end of the building was in a rough U shape. Rogues and high-security crazies alike were stashed in the cells, scrambled up like pieces in a badly-played game of backgammon. A few soundproofed doors were locked tightly across the halls. With her newly acquired key, it took moments for Sorrow to sneak through them.

Was that - no, that was Crane, lanky legs dangling over the edge of his too-short bed. And that was the Ventriloquist, sleeping soundly while his puppet's beady little eyes stared blankly into the hallway. Whistly, wheezy snores marked Two-Face's cell. Across the hall from him slept Edward Nygma, propped upside-down on his bed in a straitjacket, feet neatly crossed on his pillow.

Sorrow giggled slightly and moved on. Ah. In the cell next to Eddie, burrowed into his blankets like a crab in a sand pile, slept the disheveled and highly medicated ex-Dr. Teng. Drool pulsed out of his mouth and puddled on his shirtsleeve.

Sorrow slowly set the wheelchair down and unlocked the door. Her fingers slipped into the waist pack and wrapped comfortingly around the syringe. "Hey," she whispered. The man didn't move. "Wake up!" No answer. Boldly, she reached out and punched him in the shoulder. He could have been made of rubber, with all his lack of reaction.

Fabulous. She tucked the syringe into the pack, making sure to keep it easily accessible, and fetched the chair. It opened with a whining _skreek_. "Come on," she crooned, tucking the man inside it. "We're going on a little ride, oh yes indeed." He slumped in the chair, bubbling drool, as she pushed him into the hallway.

On their way out of the building, they encountered five orderlies, two nurses, and a janitor, all of whom received a brief brush of her hand and a sprinkling of tears. She left them crying in corners and moved on, hurrying through the warren of hallways until she reached a familiar area.

A door labeled "Inmate Storage" opened with one of the keys on the ring. Sorrow ducked inside, ferreting through the boxes until she found the one containing her costume. She took a moment to slip the coat on over her jumpsuit and hurried back out, dumping the box in Teng's lap. The last door was in sight. Sorrow skipped ahead, unlocked it, and came back to her zonked-out charge. She shoved him toward the exit, letting his kneecaps open the door for both of them, and wheeled him outside.

Freedom.

She drew in one delicious breath of crisp fall air and headed for the staff parking lot. It shouldn't take _too_ long to find the car that matched the key in her pocket...

* * *

One of the perks to being a rogue is that you don't have to waste your time with bureacracy. If you want something, you _take_ it, and damn the consequences. After all, with fifty life sentences under your belt, does it really matter if you add another felony or two to the list?

The basement of the small apartment building had been "rented" in about thirty seconds. Normally, landlords are a little hesitant about acquiring tenants at four in the morning. Then again, most prospective tenants aren't the type to persuade the landlord with lethal force.

The medical supply store across town had also "donated" some supplies to the cause, thanks to half an hour of concentrated effort by her henchmen. Sorrow had seated herself in a nicely padded chair from the lobby, watching Teng with interest. He was sprawled on a gurney, much like the one he'd had in his own basement lab. His wrists, ankles, and torso were strapped tightly to the siderails, and the metal fasteners clinked gently against the bars as he twitched in his sleep.

A henchman - the only one she'd told to stay - cleared his throat uncertainly. "Uh, boss? You need anything else?"

"No. Have someone come back tomorrow," she ordered.

"Sure thing, boss." The man dipped his head in a nod of respect and scurried away, latching the door tightly behind him.

Sorrow rose to her feet, brushing her black-gloved hands down her long blue coat, and strolled over to the pinioned man. With one finger tapping thoughtfully on her lips, she looked over the restraints. Yes...they'd do.

Time to get started. She settled herself gracefully on the bed in the gap between the siderails, tucking her legs up underneath her like a nesting bird, and glared at the man. Her gloved hand snapped out like a snake and slapped him hard across his bristly cheeks.

His head bobbled to the side like a doll's as his eyes flew open. "What -" he began, stopping short as he realized who was glaring at him. "How _dare_ you lay your hands on me!"

"It's easy," Sorrow said flatly. "Watch." She backhanded him across the face again.

"Sooner or later you'll realize what you're doing," he snarled, "and you'll try to say you're sorry, but it'll be too late, because I'll be - _mph_!"

Sorrow, with one hand pressed over his mouth, shook her head. "Shut up," she growled. She removed her hand.

"You'll pay for this," he promised darkly. "I'll see to thaaaaaaaaOW!" he yelped as Sorrow shoved his mouth closed. Blood from his bitten tongue sprayed between his lips.

"I said _shut up_," Sorrow repeated. "I see you don't understand what we're doing here. Well, that's fine..._dear_," she spat venemously. "Little boy, little child, little crazy man...you didn't think I forgot how to do this, did you? You did _such_ a good job of demonstrating it, over and over and over..." She pulled a syringe out of her pocket and dangled it in her fingers.

"You don't scare me," he blustered, tugging at his straps. "You could never hurt Dr. Teng. You probably don't even have anything dangerous in that syringe! You _certainly_ don't have any of my medicine." He rattled his restraints peevishly.

Sorrow rolled the syringe lightly between her fingertips. "You don't think so?" she asked mildly. "I can think of a lot of things that I might have...acids are _so_ easy to get hold of, don't you agree?" She dangled the syringe over his eyes. "Particularly in large amounts. Whoops!" she said, thumbing the plunger to the bottom of the syringe. Liquid splashed in a stream all over the bound man's face. He screamed, high and shrill, like a little girl faced with a tarantula.

"But as it turns out, you're right on one count. It's just water, sadly," she shrugged, tossing the syringe away. It stuck in the rotting wood of the wall like a dart in a dartboard.

"I knew it," he said through a face full of sweat and blood. "You wouldn't _dare_ hurt me."

"Hurt you? I wouldn't dream of it," Sorrow said, sliding off the table. "It'll be much more fun if no one hurts you. Physical pain is so...barbaric."

She slipped her gloves off, revealing her gleaming black palms. "No, this time...we'll do things my way," she drawled. One blackened fingertip traced a stripe of utter sadness down his face.

"You can't...you _can't_..." Teng muttered, tears forming in the corners of his eyes.

"I can," she said softly. "So long, bastard."

* * *

A long week dragged itself along.

Inside Arkham, the escape had gone largely unremarked upon. Their first suspicion had been that Teng had captured Sorrow again. They'd believed that right up to the point that they'd discovered the orderly sleeping in Sorrow's bed. He'd sheepishly told them what had really happened, at least, what he could remember, and everything he said clearly pointed to Sorrow taking Teng.

No one in the asylum had particularly cared for their ex-coworker. The orderlies and guards had resented his holier-than-thou attitude as a doctor and his high-decibel madness as a patient, the secretaries had bemoaned his excessively punctilious attitude to paperwork (resulting in countless hours lost to redoing files over and over again), and the other doctors had been appalled at the taint of corruption that he'd brought to their jobs. As far as the staff of Arkham was concerned, Sorrow could _have_ him. Still, it was their job to report the escape to the police, and they did so - three days later, buried in a stack of progress reports and official court documents. The news of Sorrow's escape didn't reach legal ears until the fifth day of her absence.

In her basement halfway across Gotham, Sorrow was curled in her usual chair watching Teng from behind a crack in the closed door. It was better than television, she mused as she watched him fighting his restraints.

It had taken her a few days to figure out what psychiatrists had known for years. Merely keeping someone at the bottom levels of depression was easy. They just laid there and watched the world go by, uncaring about anything. But once they began to come out of it - once they got enough energy together to actually do things again - they turned into sneaky, lying souls ready to carry out their plans to kill themselves.

Watching Teng lay there was satisfying, but boring. Watching Teng fight his restraints for the knife on the cabinet just out of his reach was _entertainment_. She couldn't let it happen all the time, of course - it would have been exceedingly dangerous for her to keep him in that state when he inevitably had to be walked to the bathroom by one of her henchmen - but she'd managed to keep him fighting for death for almost two hours now. A new record!

She decided that now was probably a good time to send him back down for the night. When he was laying there, sobbing, hallucinating and reliving his past, he was hardly a threat at all. She swung the door open and stepped inside, greeting him with a happy smile. He was lucid enough to stop fighting when she showed herself, and growled his fury at her through his tear-roughened throat.

"You know, I never used to understand why those people in the movies always got such a kick out of having James Bond or whoever at their mercy," she said, peeling off a glove. "They'd put them in deathtraps, or tell them their plan to watch them squirm...I never understood why they didn't just shoot them right there and get them out of their way forever." Teng cringed ever so slightly as she came closer. Her happy smile widened. "And I thought, if I ever had an enemy, someone who I hated enough to want to kill them...I'd just _do it_." She leaned down, her smile morphing into a sharklike grin. "But now I know why they wait. It's so much more...satisfying this way. To watch the one you hate _suffer_ like they've made you suffer."

Sorrow cocked her head as they heard a faint spray of shattering glass from upstairs. "Looks like we've got visitors," she said, tugging off her other glove. "Say goodnight, sweetheart."

The door burst open, showering splinters of wood everywhere. Robin and Batgirl tumbled into the room, taking in everything before turning their gaze onto the man tied to the gurney. Sorrow leaped onto Teng, kneeling on his stomach with her toes digging into his side. He grunted with pained anger. "Well, well. Party crashers. Say hello to our guests, _dear_."

Teng wheezed wordlessly. "Try it again," Sorrow commanded, nudging his ribcage with her kneecap.

"H-hello," he gasped, glaring daggers at his captor.

"Let him go," Robin ordered.

"No," Sorrow said flatly. "You want him? Come and get him." She beckoned at them with an ungloved hand.

In the next instant, Batgirl leaped in a flying tackle and shoved Sorrow to the ground, pinning her wrists in her strong hands. They rolled around on the small floor, crashing into furniture and boxes alike as Sorrow tried to reach Batgirl's exposed chin. Above them, perched on the table, Robin was frantically undoing buckles and straps.

As Robin undid the last buckle, Sorrow wrenched herself out of Batgirl's grasp and rolled to her feet, kicking her solidly in the shoulder with a heavy boot. Batgirl crashed to the ground, gasping with shock, and Sorrow kicked her again in the kidneys.

Teng and Robin scrambled off of the table as Sorrow backed into the corner. "Get away from me!" she snapped. Batgirl, rubbing her injured shoulder, rose to her feet.

The imminent three-person dogpile on Sorrow was interrupted when Teng spotted the gleaming knife on the cabinet. He snatched it up and backed away, wild-eyed. The vigilantes stood back-to-back in the middle of the room, watching their targets closely.

"Put the knife down," Robin coaxed.

"Make it easy on yourself," Batgirl said, glaring at Sorrow with a look that promised to make things as difficult as possible.

Sorrow looked around the pair of Bats. Teng was crouched in the opposite corner, holding the knife tightly in one hand. "Reggie," she called in a soft, southern accent. "Oh, Reggie, how could ya?"

"Stop it!" he shouted, eyes rolling madly from side to side. "You're not her! Stop it!"

"Reggie," Sorrow taunted. "Reggie..."

"Shut up! SHUT UP!"

"You know how ta fix it, Reggie..."

Teng stared at the knife. Then, with a howl of desperation, he jammed it deep into his midriff and sliced viciously downward. "There!" he gargled. "You...can't..." He collapsed to the floor.

Robin raced to his side. "Help me!" he shouted. Batgirl took her attention off of Sorrow and gasped at the sight of the eviscerated man.

Sorrow nipped through the broken doors and pounded up the stairs, disappearing into a nearby alley. The car she'd stolen from the asylum revved up and roared away into the night.

* * *

Sorrow ditched her stolen car quickly in a nearby parking garage. She hadn't had time to check the car thoroughly for any tracking devices, and the thought that even now the two vigilantes could be calmly following her made her extremely uneasy.

Her heavy boots made tapping echoes as she scrambled back onto the street. She darted a quick glance right, left, and (for good measure) straight up and at the walls surrounding her. There was no sign of any vigilante activity. This was either a very good thing, or a very bad thing.

She couldn't waste any more time. She started walking quickly down a nearby alley, shuddering inside as her boots clopped heavily against the damp asphalt. A paper rustling behind her sent another thrill of adrenaline coursing through her veins. Sorrow started running. Her boots hit the ground as fast as she could push them. She raced through a puddle, the droplets flying up around her like a spray of confetti.

The nearest street sign flashed green as she pounded by it. She was in the rat's nest of apartments that littered the poor section of Gotham. She knew people here. If she could only find someone who would open their doors-

Her eyebrows raised suddenly, and she grinned to herself as she kicked herself into an even higher gear. Sammy lived down here, didn't he? He hadn't picked up his phone when she'd sent out that call for henchmen last week. Well, she'd just see what he was up to...

She dodged and darted through the streets, pausing once to hide behind a dumpster as a pair of headlights flashed by. When they had gone, she rolled herself quietly back into a standing position and smiled as she saw the little apartment house that was her final destination.

She skittered closer, walking as softly as she could now, and slipped inside by stepping through the wreckage of a door that lay uselessly in its hinges. She skipped lightly over a slumbering drunk, stepping carefully around the puddle of bourbon that was oozing from the tipped bottle in his hand, and made her way up the rickety stairs to the third floor.

Apartment 306 was difficult to find, partly because the nail holding the top of the six had slipped and transformed it into apartment 309. Sorrow stood quietly outside the door, readying herself, then kicked it with a resounding thud.

Nothing happened.

She kicked it a few more times for good measure. Finally, the door cracked open just wide enough to show the barrel of a gun pointed directly at her face. "Whaddayou want?" snarled a voice from the darkness inside.

"Sammy, Sammy, Sammy," Sorrow tsked. "I thought you'd have learned some manners by now." The gun lowered itself and withdrew. The door slammed shut, accompanied by the rattling clicks of a chain being removed. The door opened back up again to reveal a short man with a potbelly tucking a handgun back inside the pocket of his pajama pants.

"S-sorry, Sorrow, I, uh, wasn't expecting callers," he said, standing firmly in the doorway. "What are you doin' here?"

"Aren't you going to ask me in, Sammy?" she asked quietly.

Sammy looked over his shoulder anxiously, then looked back at her. "I, uh, that is…"

"_Sam-_my," Sorrow singsonged, folding her arms. "I don't have _time_ for this…" She tilted her head forward ever so slightly, growling out "And you _owe_ me."

"Right, right," he muttered, opening the door wide. "But, uh, my wife, she, uh, doesn't know about us. Me. So could you, uh…if it's not too much trouble…the makeup?"

Sorrow smiled cheerfully. "As it so happens, Sam, I was planning on that anyway. A little incognito never hurts, eh?"

"Right, right, like you say," he nodded, showing her in. "Bathroom's that way, use whatever you want. You want I should get you some clothes, I guess?"

Sorrow nodded, then grimaced. "Actually, Sam-boy, there may be a little problem with picking up any of my stuff for the next few days. Bats on my tail and all."

"Bats?" he choked. One hand darted for the handgun in his pocket.

"Oh, don't worry, not _the_ bat, just his little helpers," she dismissed. "But if you've got anything I could wear just laying around…"

"Uh…You could borrow one of my wife's dresses, I guess."

Wife? "When did you get married?" Sorrow asked, just now registering the news.

"Oh. Um, about two months ago, when you were in - um...you were busy," he finished diplomatically. "I'll get you something to wear. Bathroom's that way." He disappeared into the door at the end of the little hallway.

A woman's sleepy voice raised in an irritated query mixed with Sammy's tenor hushing her vigorously as Sorrow lazily strolled into the bathroom. Five minutes with a washcloth left her face pink and shining. She discarded the grey-streaked cloth and sauntered back out to the living room, where Sammy was piling pillows and blankets on the couch. "I told her you're a cousin from out of town," he hissed as he fluffed a pillow. "She thinks you're in Gotham for a job interview, and the plane lost your luggage."

"Fine," Sorrow nodded.

"I'll see you tomorrow," he whispered.

Sorrow spent the night dozing fitfully on the couch, still in costume, buried under an armload of blankets. If she had to run, she didn't want to do it wearing pajamas.

* * *

Sorrow slept through breakfast the next morning and woke up to find Mrs. Sammy already gone to her job, whatever it was. She slipped into the outfit she'd been left - a green dress with enough lace to cutesy up half a wardrobe - and made her way out to the kitchen.

Sammy was sitting at a tiny table, only big enough for two. He greeted her nervously and started making her breakfast as she seated herself at the table. "So, ah, what's new?" he asked after five minutes of dead silence.

Sorrow shrugged. "Not much, same old same old, Sammy. Except…" she shook her head briefly. He looked at her expectantly, holding the frying pan in one hand with a poised spatula in the other. "Except that life gets a lot more complicated once the bats catch up with you," she finished.

"Oh, tell me about it," he rolled his eyes. "Y'know how many scars I've had to explain away to the missus?"

"How many, Sammy?" she asked, deadpan serious. He opened his mouth to answer and caught her eyes twinkling.

"Oh, man." He shook his head and scraped her breakfast out onto a plate, setting it down carefully in front of her. "No, seriously though. How ya been?"

"Fine," she answered, taking a bite of toast. He turned his head to the side, looking at her through the corners of his eyes disbelievingly. She pursed her lips around the toast. "I hate when you do that, Sammy. All right, fine. I'm not fine at all. Happy?"

"What's up?" he asked.

"Well, for a start, I've spent half a year in and out of Arkham. Fun place," she added, "if you're a masochist."

"I heard," Sammy said quietly.

Sorrow shrugged. "Anyway, between the Bats and the Joker, life's pretty full, y'know?"

"The Joker?"

"I kind of…almost killed him. It's a long story," she admitted.

Sammy sat back in his chair, absolutely floored, and then brought his hands up and started applauding slowly. "Almost killed the J-man? That's so wicked cool!"

Sorrow looked at him, confused, then started laughing. "J-man? Wicked cool? What _have_ you been up to, Sammy?"

Sammy shrugged. "Well, you were...away...and I needed some cash, right? So I picked up a job or two, and…well, you worked with the Flytrap before, right?" She nodded. Jake "the Flytrap" Venus was a comedian, through and through, with a patois of his own that tended to rub off on everyone he met.

"Whatever happened to Jake, anyway?" Sorrow asked, taking a drink of water.

"Flippy heard about his nickname and wasn't very happy."

Flippy…oh yes, Two-Face. She shrugged and took another drink. "How long 'till he's out of the hospital?"

"Coupla weeks," he said. "So, uh, about you stayin' here - "

"I've got to lay low for a few days, Sammy," she said. "Call it a week and I'll call off your debt. Free and clear."

His eyes shifted back and forth, then he nodded. "One week."

She finished eating breakfast, watching him watch her, then removed herself to the living room. Sammy stayed int he kitchen, clattering dishes in the sink as he cleaned up. It was almost like being back home in the warehouse...

Stuffed with good, non-Arkham food, comfortable, and weary from her busy night, Sorrow dropped into a doze. She was damn lucky Sammy had been around in the first place. Things would have been a lot harder without him...

* * *

The first bank robbery had almost gone horribly wrong. Sorrow sat on her hard wooden chair, a queen on her throne, and glared icily around the table at the assorted selection of men. They glared right back, angry, upset and confused about what had happened.

A daylight robbery meant no vigilantes. They'd never shown up for any of her other break-ins, but hitting the bank at night was tantamount to spitting in the Bats' faces. No, she'd continue working during the day. It was safer that way.

It was also safer if her boys focused on fetching the cash, not scaring the customers. Unfortunately, one of the men hadn't paid attention to that bit of his instructions, and he'd taken the opportunity to grab a young woman by the hair and drag her across the room as a hostage.

That wasn't part of the plan. They were only supposed to snatch and grab, not stick around long enough to need hostages. He'd actually dared to argue with her about it in the bank.

Now they were safe in the warehouse, unlikely to be interrupted by the forces of justice. She rose to her feet and began stalking slowly around the table. "I'll make this quick. My instructions were very simple. Take no prisoners. And Carl here," she delivered a quick slap to the back of Carl's head, "didn't listen. I would be inclined to simply allow Carl to work off his transgressions, but this is not the first time he's failed me." She peeled off a glove.

Carl, a mountain of a man, shoved himself up from the table and stared down at her. "Like you're actually gonna kill me. Little miss priss here couldn't even kill a goody-two-shoes clerk," sneered Carl. "What are you gonna do, girlie? I know you ain't got a gun."

"I don't need one," she said quietly. She stretched a hand out and grabbed his arm. "You're already dead." With that, she slipped her glove back on and walked away.

He laughed at her receding back. "Who do you think you're…you're…" He shuddered. His massive face turned red as bright tears stood out in his eyes. Then, like a toddler, he dropped to the floor and started wailing.

"Take that to the outer room. When it's dead, toss it in the river," she said coldly. Two of the shocked henchmen nodded agreement, picking the sobbing giant up by his armpits and dragging him across the floor. "Sammy, fix me some tea and bring it to the roof."

Ignoring her bawling henchman, she swept out of the room and stalked regally to the stairs that led to the roof. She stamped up them, letting her boots splinter just enough of the rotting wood to telegraph her bad mood to the henchmen, and slammed the door down to the rest of the warehouse as hard as she could.

When Sammy came up later, balancing a tray with a teapot and a teacup on it, he found Sorrow sitting on the farthest corner of the roof. Her boots were dangling in the empty space past the rain gutters.

"Ah…Sorrow?" he murmured. He could see her take a quick swipe at her eyes with one hand before she turned around to face him.

"Sammy." She rose to her feet slowly and picked her way across the rotting rooftop to him. She took the tea carefully, nodding her thanks, then turned away.

"You did the right thing," he offered quietly as she walked.

She turned back, startled. "What?"

"Carl's worked for a lotta bosses in his time," he continued. "Skipped out on his family, beat up on the newer guys in whatever gang he was in. No one's gonna miss him."

She pressed her lips together, ready to deny that she was in any way sorry that she killed him. He twisted his head to the left, staring at her through the corners of his eyes.

"Yeah, okay," she muttered, shoulders slumping. "It's just…"

"The first one's always hard," he soothed, patting her on the shoulder. "If you wanna…y'know…talk about it, you got Sammy." She nodded slowly and waved her hand in a dismissal. He trudged back down the steps, shutting the door carefully behind him.

From that point on, Sammy had been her confidante. She had to be careful to keep up her mask around the men, letting them think she was a cold-hearted bitch who would kill them as soon as they made a mistake. Sammy was her escape. Sometimes at night, the two would retreat to the roof and talk for hours.

Then there was the day that Sammy came to her with a problem.

She was sitting on the roof again, watching the sun go down. The door behind her opened, and she whirled around defensively only to see Sammy nervously clutching his hat in front of him. "Sammy," she greeted, idly kicking her feet back over the side of the roof.

"Hey…um…I have a, uh, problem," he muttered, shutting the door and walking over to her.

"Yes?"

"It's, uh. Well, that night off we had last week, I went down to the bars, and I did a little gambling. I was doin' really good, too," he added, aggrieved, "but then I lost all my money and then some to some little rat in a trench coat."

Sorrow smiled. "What's the problem, Sammy? You should be able to handle one little rat."

"It's not that simple. See, one of our boys saw me with him, and then this morning he tells me the rat works for Two-Face. The rat owes Two-Face, and if the rat doesn't get his money from me by nine o'clock Two-Face is gonna come looking for me to get his money back."

Sorrow's smile faded as she thought quickly to herself. "How much do you owe this little rat, anyway?"

"A, uh, well…I've got all of it but the five hundred bucks," Sammy admitted.

"Five hundred? Twofers must be scraping the bottom of the barrel if he's coming after you for five…wait. Five?"

Sammy looked away. "Twenny-two hundred. But the five's the only bit I don't got."

"Well, it's nice to see Harv's keeping his side of things up." Sorrow tapped her fingers on the side of the roof. "I bet you've got all your money in this, eh, Sammy?"

"Mine and, well, mine and Tasha's," he stammered.

"Tasha? I haven't heard about any Tasha," she mused. "Well, I can't let one of my boys get iced by a lawyer. I'll give you the cash, Sammy."

"Thank you! I owe you for this," he burbled.

"I'll remember that," Sorrow smiled, leading him down to the giant safe in her apartment.

* * *

Luckily, she had remembered it. She stretched and uncurled herself from the sofa, then wandered out to find Sammy.

He was sitting in the kitchen on a barstool, watching the tiny television on the countertop and forking a huge piece of ham into his mouth. "C'mon, c'mon," he was muttering as the football teams on the screen raced toward the hurtling brown ovoid. They missed it and it went tumbling end over end into the sidelines. "How'm I supposed to pay off Jerry if you keep missing the friggin' ball?" he howled.

"Gambling again, Sammy?" she smirked, folding her arms. He looked up guiltily and lowered his fork.

"Uh…well, see, Tasha wants a new dress…y'know how it is…but Jerry's too friggin' lucky. I can't ever beat the guy." Sammy sighed, then brightened. "Oh! The news is comin' on, you wanna see if you're on?"

"Sure," she said, perching herself on a kitchen chair. He spun the dial and an anchorwoman began speaking. They watched the leading story of the night, another one of Joker's killing sprees in the uptown district, in total silence.

"In other news, escaped convict Reginald Teng committed suicide last night in a basement on the east side of town." Sorrow's eyes lit up like a five-alarm fire. "Teng, a former doctor at Arkham Asylum, bled to death from a severed artery in his abdomen. The Gotham police have informed us that they believe Teng was kidnapped and led to death by a fellow Arkham inmate known as Sorrow." A still-frame of her robbing a bank flashed up onto the screen and cut to a close-up of her grey makeuped face. "Police say that Sorrow is armed and extremely dangerous. She was last sighted on R Street, and may be driving a stolen black sedan." The newsreader turned to the second camera. "We'll keep you updated as we get more information. And now, with the weather-"

Sammy snapped the set off and turned to his boss. "That the same doc that..." he trailed off.

A wide, starry grin cracked her face. "Yes! And he's _dead_!" She leaped from her chair and twirled in a dance of joy. "Dead! Dead! Dead!"

"Wait!" Sammy said, confused. "You were there, though, right?"

"Yep!" Sorrow said cheerfully.

"Didn't you see him stab himself?"

"Yep!" she repeated.

"Why'd you think he was still alive?"

Sorrow paused her dance. "Never assume they're dead until you see the body," she said gravely. "As I believe _someone_ once told me." Sammy, who had indeed told her this long ago, chuckled as he watched his boss bouncing around the kitchen. "He's dead, he's dead, he's deeaaaad!" she sang, scooping up the lovable puppy cookie jar and tweaking its ceramic nose. "Hey!" she gasped, setting the dog down. "We should go out tonight! Celebrate!"

"Aren't the Bats gonna be lookin' for ya, though?" Sammy asked.

"Well, yeah, but...doesn't matter. Tomorrow's the sixteenth!"

"So what?"

"The Bats always get me on the sixteenth. I'm safe tonight."

Sammy gave her that twisty, squinty look again. "Boss, are you sure you're okay?"

"I'm _fine_, Sammy," she said, exasperated. "Look. We pulled that bank job and then the Bat got me on April sixteenth, right?"

"Yeah," Sammy said cautiously.

"And then I came back here and Batman caught me again on May sixteenth," Sorrow pointed out.

"Well, okay, but..." Sammy said hesitantly.

"And the next time I was out of Arkham, I ended up going back on August sixteenth," she said, arms crossed. "Tomorrow's the sixteenth of November. I'm _safe_ tonight."

Sammy regarded her with cautious wonder, as if he was questioning her sanity. "Whatever you say, boss," he agreed placidly.

"Good. Leave your wife a note and get ready to go."

"It's only two!" Sammy protested.

"And I've got a lot of celebrating to do. Move it!"

* * *

Sorrow woke up the next morning with a vicious headache. The previous night had been...well, she hadn't ever heard what other people did when their tormentors kicked the bucket, so she'd chosen that time-honored celebratory tradition: getting so drunk that she couldn't see straight.

She laid in bed until midafternoon, watching the room slowly spin around her. Finally, when she heard a bunch of school kids chattering as they left their bus, she dragged herself out of bed and slouched to the bathroom.

It was the sixteenth. If she had to go out, it was time to go out with a bang.

She rubbed her eyes and grabbed her costume, examining the occasional new alcohol stain with a look of surprise. When had she had bright green margaritas? She shrugged and slid into her coat. The tiny makeup kit in her pocket had just enough left in it to cover her face with grey. With careful hands, she inked a pair of teardrops on either side of her eyes.

Sammy was asleep on the couch, snoring like a bear. She scribbled a note for him on the back of a bar flyer - "We're even" - and headed out for one last night of freedom. Okay, so it had only been a couple of days instead of a week, but he'd managed to keep her in one piece and get her home safely after a night of debauchery that she didn't even remember. That had to count for something.

* * *

The sun was going down and she was still free.

It was amazing, she thought to herself as she kicked through a pile of dry leaves in the park. She'd gone to the drugstore, the mall, in fact she'd been pretty much everywhere in the city, and there were no cops on her tail. There were no Bats either, but then she supposed that it was a bit early for them to be out.

The looks on their _faces_! That moment when they realized it was her, and not just someone dressed like her, and that their lives just might be in danger. Oh, that look!

She saw a teenage couple kissing each other on a park bench. _Target acquired_, she thought with a small giggle, and strolled casually up to them. With insistent fingers, she tapped politely on the young boy's shoulder. And tapped. And tapped.

"What the hell do you _want_?" he snapped, pulling away from his girl. As his eyes met Sorrow's, his face paled.

"Excuse me, son, could you tell me the time? I'm not wearing my watch," she said, holding up her arms to expose her gloves.

"Uh, uh, uh, five-thirty," he stammered, checking the flashy watch on his wrist.

"Thanks, kid." She continued down the path, snickering to herself as she heard the two quietly freaking out and running away in the other direction. Leaves crunched under her boots as she walked casually along, running gloved fingers along the fences and bushes that lined the path.

The sun was down now.

She hopped the fence and plowed on through the park, making her way through the foliage and the trees and avoiding the paths. No one disturbed the rest of her walk. No one was even in the park anymore. Everyone avoided Gotham's parks at night if they could help it - not just because of muggers and drug dealers, but because there was a very real possibility that the shrubs would come alive and strangle you to death.

This particular park was surrounded by a seven-foot-tall brick wall. Sorrow, pressed against it, peered cautiously out of the gate. A veritable army of police officers were gathered there, guns aimed directly at where she would have been walking if she'd stuck to the path.

She slid herself quietly back around to the other side of the wall and took a deep breath. They hadn't seen her. Just because she was going to be caught tonight didn't mean she had to be captured _that_ way.

She crept quietly along the wall, trying not to make a noise until she was far away from the gate. Once she determined that she was far enough away, she got to her feet and bolted like a startled deer, trailing one hand on the bricks as she ran.

A hand like an iron starfish clamped around her wrist. Thanks to inertia and the impossibility of making Batman move an inch when he didn't want to, Sorrow sped in a curve and thudded into the wall. "Hey," she protested weakly. "Thass not..._heeey_..." She shook her head violently, trying to snap herself back into reality as Batman ratcheted a set of cuffs around her wrists.

"You're going back to Arkham," he growled, pulling her along like a dog on a leash.

She thought of Sammy, probably still asleep in his apartment. "Toldja," she smirked into the empty air.

"What?" Batman snapped.

"Nothing," she said innocently. So what if he was forcing her to return to Arkham? She could be back out by next week. Was there really anything left at Arkham to bother her?

_Joker, certainly, whenever they got around to recapturing him, _she thought as they loaded her into a police van._ That gritty oatmeal at breakfast...forced medications...therapy..._

Therapy. With so-called Dr. Troy Grey.

Oh, yes, something would have to be done about that. Yes, indeed...

* * *

_Author's Note: The whole sixteenth thing was completely unintentional. At some point, I went through the story, assigning dates to events, and yes - I managed to get her captured regularly on the sixteenth, totally by accident. It's funny, because sixteen's always been my lucky number._

_Anyway! Sorrow's story will continue in "Reinventing". Thanks for reading!_


End file.
